The use of GPS systems for navigation is accepted and commonly used, now almost indispensable, especially for a person navigating unfamiliar places such as a new city, a college campus, etc. More recently, additional functions such as applications (“apps”) which will tell the user where to find particular restaurants, or a gas station nearby, etc. have appeared. The information supplied as a result of these searches is not served from databases tended or populated by the suppliers of those services. Instead this third party information (e.g., gas prices, restaurant menu items, campus events) is controlled, compiled, and served from databases managed by a third-party search provider, such as Google.
It may be preferable, for both the service provider and the end-user, that this information be provided instead from databases tended by the service provider (i.e., the restaurant, theater, university, etc.) to ensure that this information is current, complete, and reliable. In addition, third-party searches do not change the appearance and features based on the detected location—i.e., a Google search result will not change the display on a portable communications device to show the Stanford colors and logo, and will not provide the detail of information which Stanford might want to provide a visitor to the Stanford campus.
Thus it would be desirable to configure a location-aware app on a portable communications device that changes its appearance and features based on a detected location.
It would be further desirable that the location can be detected by any known means such as GPS, Wi-Fi, mobile network, Bluetooth, NFC, geo-fencing with beacons, and the like.